Anyone playing Modern Warfare 2 on PC with hacks/cheats is probably going to have a very boring weekend as Infinity Ward is about to ban your account. That’s according to a tweet posted on Robert Bowling’s fourzerotwo Twitter account:

@fourzerotwo Robert, you should really try to take care of cheaters in MW2. It’s getting ridiculous: http://ow.ly/Gbyn

The link lead to the video you see below.

Robert is Creative Strategist at Infinity Ward so if anyone knows when such a kill button is being pressed he will. 2,500 players all using cheats should disappear before the night is over then, meaning less crowded servers and hopefully less “wtf?” moments when someone gets a headshot while you swear there was a wall between you.

If you haven’t seen what these cheats allow you to do then this video is a good example. The player, going by the name of Herp Derp, has aimbot and wallhack cheats enabled accounting for his great aim through solid concrete:

Such cheats are limited to the PC version of the game and it is unlikely the equivalent is going to happen on the console versions. That is unless someone figures out how to introduce them on a pirated copy and get that version connected in a live game. The odds are against such a scenario, but you never know. Thankfully with both Xbox 360 and PS3 accepting updates when online it would be easily patched anyway.

Infinity Ward does need to keep on top of cheaters because it just completely spoils the game for all the other players trying to do well without cheating. It will be interesting to see if lifetime bans are imposed or whether they opt for a cooling off period of a few weeks or months.

Whatever happens, there are going to be 2,500 very angry gamers tomorrow morning who probably intended to spend the whole of the weekend playing MW2 online. There’s a virtual cookie for the first link in the comments below to a naive cheater posting on a MW2 forum about having trouble getting online tomorrow.

Reader Comments

Richard Eid

The bans are permanent. Infinity Ward went with Steamworks, which includes Valve Anti-Chat(VAC). VAC2 bans are lifetime bans and will prevent the cheater’s account from playing Modern Warfare 2 through Steam and IWNet permanently. The only way these cheaters will be able to play Modern Warfare 2 online again is if they repurchase the game on a separate Steam account.

Modern Warfare 2 Single Player should not be affected.

Matthew Walker

If Bowling and the rest of the Infinity ward crew think that will stop the hackers then the lot of them are delusional. It was their asinine actions which caused the hackers in the first place, so banning a few isn’t going to stop the hacks.

They might stop a few kids who bought hacks, but not the people who wrote the hacks, as they are as smart at writing code as the steam people, and through IW actions regarding dedicated servers are pissed off, and aim to get even, its now a war of attrition between steam coders and thousands of hacker coders, and steam and IW will ultimatly lose. Way to go hackers, I hope you get into the 360 consoles and destroy this game.

awesomeo

Can I get some of what you’re smoking there Matt? How does the lack of a dedicated server translate into cheating? I could see piracy or hacked dedicated servers as revenge, but cheating in-game? They’d do that anyway because these people don’t play to have fun. They play games just to ruin everyone else’s good time.

One reason I lost interest in online play was the little aholes who cheat. As far as MW2 and no dedicated servers, it will not see my PC. Dragon Age did though and I am still loving Fallout 3.
BF2 is still a great game for online play if I feel like it.

KickinDatAzz

IW brought this on themselves.
They had a perfectly good thing going with COD4MW. There ARE servers still out there where cheats are not usable. If the ADMINS keep their banlists and PB up to date for their servers there are no issues. I play on several MW MOD servers that are crazy active, and there are no issues there either.
IW took something that wasn’t broke and tried to fix it(retards)!
In the process they have enraged the PC community by outright lying, as well as charging higher console prices for a half-assed attempt at a ‘better’ game. The game was hacked THE DAY IT CAME OUT. I feel they get what they deserve in this situation. Hope they have fun trying to keep up with the hax!

Here’s a fun fact: if you take the number of signatures currently on the MW2 online petition, and assume that each of those were only GOING to purchase one copy, it equates to $13,968,900 US. That almost 14 million dollars they LOST on people who wanted to buy it,like myself. I would not install this game if you gave it to me for free. For that matter, I won’t even pirate it to play the singleplayer portion of it, and that’s saying a lot!

Patiently waiting for Bad Company 2….. and MAG where up to 128 players on one server. 9 vs 9? Gimme a frakin break! As a PC and Console gamer they definately lost any sales from my money.

http://arghyle.com Sal Cangeloso

ugh they need to fix the javelin bug. that thing is freaking so annoying. so many sites posted about it (including how-tos) that now a lot of people are doing it–and it only takes one to ruin a match.

Theistic

The best thing they should do is put a “Vote to Kick” option in the game. 60% of the players should be a fair amount. This at the very leaset would discourage people from cheating and give the people who want to play fair a way to fight back. Right now I feel pretty helpless when there is a hacker in the room, the only thing you can do is quit. CoD 4 at least had admins that could kick cheaters but now we don’t have anything.

OMFG

man you people are a bunch of crying sissies. Fact is MW and MW2 are two of the best shooter games to come out since the halflife series.

ALL games get hacked, most of them within the first few days. MW2 is created off the same design as MW, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it was hacked as soon as it came out (duh fucktard).

LuciousTheLimp

It is understandable that all games that are worth a damn will get hacked, I personally do not use hacks as i feel it ruins the game. This is supposed to be a skill based game and all the hackers do is ruin matches. I really hope they make admins or a vote to kick button as the hackers are getting completely out of control. If you suck at a game than just continue to suck under your own skills instead of hacking to become a virtual juggernaut. Game hackers make me think of the creepy kind of guys that NEED date rape drugs just to get laid because their natural skill is sub par to begin with.

Feydrautha

I for myself love the game play in WAW 2 but i hate te weeknd plays becouse then is it not possible to play a “normal” online game becouse every wannabe in the world is on line with a hack.

On a dedicated server wit punkbuster and a admin hack wont be tollerated and kicked out or banned on steam the kill the gameplsure for a lot of us who are legit players, i say if i knew about this kind of troubles (hacking steam not working well etc etc etc) i wouldend have bought the game.

And i promesse that if the next WAW will be on steam again i wont be buying the game it is to f***ing frustrating toi deal with hackers and the not connecting shit from steam.

It is very easy to make this game more loved wby the “normal” players make it dedicated again and let the gamers itself kill the hackers.

Aceobono

The hacker on this game are so anoying I shot a guy in the back 7 times with a shotgun and he killed me!? They need to be banned if you want to be my friend.on steam (all of my friend and me are not hackers)my acount is (WEZ) The Sniper

Wursten

Im pretty annoyed at steam to be honest, I mean there are loads, LOADS of hackers, blatantly obvious, not caring to hide their hacks and the admins do nothing, why cant you track them down? Its so bloody easy to do so, and the game is being destroyed for the rest of us who dont hack. Just five minutes ago I was playing against a hacker with once again wallhack and aimbot, and he ended up with 100 kills, and destroyed the game for the rest of us, Please start banning on a mass scale, because if you dont, any future version of the game will not be purchased on pc, I sure as hell know i wont buy it if the admins continue to do nothing.

mechmuncher

ok mw2 is getting seriously a bad game every game me and my clan members go in now has 1 or more haxers in it why develop a game if ya cant stop the haxers people will stop buying the call of duty games unless something is done the new black ops is due out but from the feed back im getting not many will by it as it will invested with haxers ina week or 2 so before releasing future games do somethign to stop the haxers punkbuster is no good now try something in house like if someone uses a hax they die aswell and it will stop them as will take em to long to rank up please from a gaming peson for 20 yrs stop them now

Jeff

Ps3 version of this game has gotten way outa hand. It is way worse than the pc version has gotten. They can derank u, take all ur perks, challanges, titles, attachments and everything away. If ur prestige lvl 10, they can knock u down to lvl 1 first prestige. Idk whats goin on with this game but me and many others i know are selling this pos.

http://reddotcity.com Phil Atio

“Such cheats are limited to the PC version of the game and it is unlikely the equivalent is going to happen on the console versions.”

So much for that … cheaters/hackers basically ruined this game for the PS3.